Real Activity User Engagement Levels

Find the users who are engaged with your content -- people who read your emails, click the links, and browse your site -- through Engagement Levels. Learn more about engagement levels, how they are determined, and how you can use them.

What is real activity on engagement levels?

Non-human interactions may boost short-term metrics but won’t lead to lasting subscriber relationships. Relying on authentic engagement data is important to truly understand subscriber behavior so that, as a marketer, you can build a base of engaged, interested subscribers through real clicks and opens, ensuring long-term success.

Implementing reporting visibility into real and non-human interactions on opens and clicks has continued to shed awareness on how non-Real Activity User Engagement Levelshuman interactions behave and continue to evolve.

Since non-human interactions tend to initiate the first click or open on a message, this has caused an inflated sense of engagement due to how it is currently calculated.

Based on this insight, Sailthru has implemented a toggle within Business Settings that will give your team the ability to enable real activity only for your user engagement levels. By default the setting will be disabled, but if enabled engagement activity will then reflect real human interactions, across reporting and lists.

Note: Be sure to review any existing reporting and/or lists that are using engagement levels before enabling this feature on your account. If the setting is enabled, it will have an immediate impact on reporting and lists using engagement level data today.

Where will the impact be visible?

If non-human interactions are inflating your metrics today, if real activity is enabled for Engagement Levels, you can expect to see immediate changes to reporting and list sizes. Below are areas in the platform where this impact will be visible:

Lists

What does this mean for partners?

We understand that advertisers and leaders may be concerned about potential list size decreases if real activity is enabled for user engagement level. The decision to reflect real human engagement should be based on what makes sense for your business.

If you are utilizing engagement levels for any audience lists, we encourage you to review and update this criteria based on your unique strategy before enabling real activity for engagement levels. Your CSM partner can also help assist and provide recommendations.

How Engagement Works

The engagement level is based on a user's level of activity within the Engagement Day period. By default, the Engagement Day period is 7 days. You can modify this time period in your Business Settings. Users are classified in one of eight ways:

  • Engaged
  • Active
  • Passive
  • New
  • Disengaged
  • Dormant
  • Hardbounce
  • Opt-out

To track Engaged users, you must have Personalization Engine enabled on your website.

Engagement in Reports

Reporting shows Engagement Groups in many reports, including your Lists report and individual User Lookups. You can use the user engagement level dynamically in your emails with Zephyr, or for building custom segments in Audience Builder. In some reports, these users levels are categorized under the following groupings:

  • Live users are all users who are Engaged, Active, or Passive. These are the users you are impacting the most with your emails.
  • Valid users are all users who are not categorized as Hardbounce or Opt-out. These are the users you are able to communicate with-your effective list size. In the Lists page, the total number of users are reported under "Emails" and Valids are reported in the adjacent "Valids'' column.

Engagement Groups

Engagement Groups are governed by how recently a user has engaged with your email or site. Recency is defined by your selected Engagement Days period.  For example, if you set your Engagement Days period to 30 days, then a user taking one or more actions (visiting your site or clicking an email) in the past 30 days is classified as Engaged.

A user who interacted with your messaging in a period before the past 30 days but not within that period is classified as Disengaged. See Define Recently with Engagement Days for some suggested engagement periods depending on your messaging schedule. 

Engaged

A subscriber who had one or more of the following events take place during the set engagement window:

  • A Real Open or Real Click on a message within the Engagement Days period AND has visited the site during the same period.
  • Visited the site during the Engagement Days period but has not opened or clicked an email. Engagement is tracked with Real Clicks and Real Opens.

Pageviews are also tracked to calculate Engagement but may come from any source.

To track Engaged users, you must have Personalization Engine enabled on your website.

Active

A subscriber with one or more Real Clicks but who hasn't browsed any additional pages on your site.Active status is defined by your selected Engagement Days period.

Passive

A subscriber who has one or more Real Opens but who hasn't clicked on a message or logged any pageviews on your site.Passive status is defined by your selected Engagement Days period.

New

A subscriber whose account was created during the Engagement Days period but who does not have any Real Opens or Real Clicks.

Disengaged

A subscriber who has interacted in the past with Real Opens, Real Clicks, and pageview activity, but didn't during your Engagement Days period.

Dormant

A subscriber with no Real Opens, Real Clicks, or pageviews on your site. A recently added user will not be considered Dormant until the Engagement Days period has passed and message or site activity hasn't occurred.

Hardbounce

Subscribers whose email address was reported as permanently undeliverable by the recipient server, or the server does not exist. These addresses will not be emailed again.

Opt-out

Subscribers who have opted out from all emails. They will not be emailed. Users who have only opted out from specific templates or lists are not included. See User Opt-Out Levels.

Define "Recently" with Engagement Days

You can change the number of days within which user activity must occur in order to be considered engaged. Modify the number of "Engagement Days" on your Business Settings page (Settings > Business) . By default, your Engagement Days value is set to 7.

If the average user receives email from you Recommended Engagement Days Value
Daily 7 days
Weekly 30 days
Monthly 90 days